Editorial: America’s verdict on sequestration? A justified yawn

Surprise, surprise, Republicans and Democrats, the House and Senate and White House, cannot agree on how to achieve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. As a result, in a process known as sequestration, automatic spending reductions to defense and to discretionary programs such as education and agriculture and transportation begin today, this fiscal year’s total coming in at about $85 billion.

The Times

Writer

Posted Mar. 1, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 1, 2013 at 1:16 AM

Posted Mar. 1, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 1, 2013 at 1:16 AM

Surprise, surprise, Republicans and Democrats, the House and Senate and White House, cannot agree on how to achieve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. As a result, in a process known as sequestration, automatic spending reductions to defense and to discretionary programs such as education and agriculture and transportation begin today, this fiscal year’s total coming in at about $85 billion.

America’s response?

Big honking deal.

The nation’s citizens can be forgiven their indifference, on several counts.

First, between this and the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff debates of the last couple of years, they quite defensibly have budget crisis fatigue. Congress can’t get its act together? So what else is new? The sun will still come up tomorrow.

Second, arguably they’re just not falling for Uncle Sam’s Chicken Little act anymore. The doomsday rhetoric they’ve heard from the Obama administration — classroom programs will be decimated, roads will go unrepaired, unmaintained planes will drop from the sky, the U.S. military will become a “hollow force,” tens of thousands will lose jobs, prepare for Recession of a Lifetime II — just doesn’t jibe with the reality of what they’re seeing, especially when the numbers are given some context.

That $85 billion may sound like a lot, but it’s only a tick above 2 percent of the federal government’s $3.8 trillion annual budget, little more than one-half of 1 percent of the size of the U.S. economy, a drop in the bucket of the nation’s annual deficit spending. Moreover, it comes against a backdrop of huge increases in annual federal expenditures — up 73 percent in the last decade, up 31 percent since 2008.

Indeed, virtually overnight in 2008, then-President George W. Bush and Congress hiked federal spending and borrowing by about $1 trillion. Then President Barack Obama entered the picture and, with the inert acquiescence of a finger-pointing Congress, made that $1 trillion bump permanent. And now U.S.A. Inc. can’t slice $85 billion of it, can’t tolerate even this most modest spending discipline? New Congresswoman Cheri Bustos is among those who believe at least that much can be found in federal duplication and waste. These aren’t even real “cuts,” in the dictionary sense, just a taming of future spending increases.

Ah, but the 2-percent-cut scenario is misleading, as well, say the apologists, because it is restricted to certain elements of the budget, not all of it. In fact the total hit on defense will be 7.9 percent, 5.3 percent on discretionary programs, both squeezed into the remaining seven months of the fiscal year. Well, it’s not like they haven’t known this was coming for nearly two years, with therefore ample time to prepare. It’s not like sequestration isn’t a bipartisan, wholly manufactured crisis. It’s not like it wasn’t their choice to make the reform of entitlements — what’s really breaking the bank — off limits (with the exception of Medicare, looking at a 2 percent shave).

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Few if any of the end-of-the-world predictions need occur, as prioritizing can be done to soften the blow on those who might otherwise be disproportionately affected. Alas, there is some self-fulfilling prophecy at work here, particularly if there is perceived political gain to be had. If you don’t get what you want — in Obama’s and Democrats’ case the “balanced approach” of more tax increases on the wealthy, which as no less an authority than the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward recently reported, is “moving the goal posts ... not the deal he made” — you act out of spite. Republicans have been known to overplay their hand, too, but not this time.

It all sounds so infantile, but then we’re talking about a Congress that hasn’t adopted a formal budget in four years, a breathtaking and unprecedented dereliction of duty (largely falling at the U.S. Senate’s feet). What business of any size doesn’t have a budget? So again, by month’s end, we have the potential for a federal government shutdown unless the parties come to terms on yet another continuing resolution to keep the dollars coming. In a sane nation, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, despite the threat of sequestration Americans see a stock market flirting with an all-time high, up 8 percent so far for the year. They see home sales up. They see businesses going about their business as if Congress is no longer relevant (though of course it is and can be, more often of late for the worse than for the better). They see the warring members of Congress and the White House so worried that they haven’t even bothered to meet face to face. Is it any wonder why they greet sequestration with a shrug, why they’re just not buying that every government expenditure is critical to life as we know it? Everyone else can tighten their belts, but not Washington?

So Uncle Sam can just sequester away, while Americans wonder where all the grown-ups have gone in the nation’s capital.